A Drama in Three Acts
BY
MARY AUSTIN
Revised Edition
AMS PRESS
NEW YORK
Reprinted from the edition of 1915, Boston
First AMS EDITION published 1969
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 70-90082
AMS PRESS, INC.
New York, N. Y. 10003
DEDICATED
IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO
H. C. H.
AS ONE WHO AMONG MANY PROTESTANTS
“MADE GOOD”
(Added by transcriber)
Preface to the First Edition
Note to the Second Edition
Persons of the Drama
Act First
Act Second
Act Third
Glossary of Indian Words and Phrases
The Dances
Costumes
[Pg vii]
The greatest difficulty to be met in thewriting of an Indian play is the extensivemisinformation about Indians. Any realaboriginal of my acquaintance resembles hisprototype in the public mind about as muchas he does the high-nosed, wooden sign of atobacco store, the fact being that, amongthe fifty-eight linguistic groups of Americanaboriginals, customs, traits, and beliefs differas greatly as among Slavs and Sicilians.Their very speech appears not to be derivedfrom any common stock. All that they reallyhave of likeness is an average condition ofprimitiveness: they have traveled just so fartoward an understanding of the world theylive in, and no farther. It is this general limitationof knowledge which makes, in spiteof the multiplication of tribal customs, acommon attitude of mind which alone affordsa basis of interpretation.
But before attempting to realize the workingof Indian psychology, you must first rid[Pg viii]yourself of the notion that there is any realdifference between the tribes of men exceptthe explanations. What determines man'sbehavior in the presence of fever, thunder,and the separations of death, is the nature ofhis guess at the causes of these things. Theissues of life do not vary so much with theconditions of civilization as is popularlysupposed.
Chiefest among the misconceptions ofprimitive life, which make difficult any dramaticpresentation of it, is the notion thatall human contacts are accompanied by thedegree of emotional stress that obtains onlyin the most complex social organizations.We are always hearing, from the peoplefarthest removed from them, of “great primitivepassions,” when in fact what distinguishesthe passions of the tribesmen fromour own is their greater liability to the pacificinfluences of nature, and their greater freedomfrom the stimulus of imagination. Whatamong us makes for the immensity of emotion,is the great weight of accumulated emotionaltradition stored up in literature andart, almost entirely wanting in the camps ofthe aboriginals. There the two greatestthemes of modern drama, love and ambition,[Pg ix]are modified, the one by the more or